


Reaching You

by lintwhite



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2012-08-08
Packaged: 2017-11-11 18:10:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lintwhite/pseuds/lintwhite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short fic examining the relationship between Kotetsu and Kaede set during the time Kotetsu was retired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reaching You

The weatherman waved a hand over a projected map. Fifty percent chance of scattered showers tomorrow, sunny weekend. Sun up, sun down, rain or shine, life went on. In the mornings, as her grandmother bustled to get her lunchbox ready, he snored on the tatami in the TV room, beer cans littered around. Life went on but there he was, here he was, in the flesh, with her. 

He’d grin at her in the afternoons when she came in, pat her head, ask how her day went, are you hungry? “A child needs her father,” she’d heard her grandmother saying to him when she thought Kaede couldn’t hear. “She needs her parent.” Kaede would often wonder, then, in moments of frustration and promises broken, if a parent really needed his child.

And now he rolled over, groaned, took a sip of beer that dripped a bit down his shirt front. The evening news came on the same channel as Hero TV. Sometimes he watched it with an indecipherable expression on his face; sometimes he told Kaede stories, neither of them paying attention anymore. He kept busy in the mornings when he woke up before 11, he went for jogs, he helped her grandmother out in the garden, sometimes he tried to cook dinner. He’d laugh about ridiculous hobbies he was thinking of taking up – hey, what do you think about basket weaving? And he’d drop the meat from his chopsticks guffawing. 

A noxious odor filled the room. “Ohhh!” Kotetsu sat up, a sleeve against his face. “Kaede, that was awful. What the heck is Mom feeding you?” He cackled, spilling beer on his shirt again. “We’re going to have to quit with the sweet potatoes.”

“Daaaad!” Kaede wailed, shielding her own face. “What is wrong with you!” 

He was crude, _disgusting_ , belching openly at dinner, leaving dirty socks on top of the clothes hamper. He meddled and asked the wrong questions and made terrible jokes. One evening he had rapped his knuckles on her bedroom door, without asking if he could come in. His expression was serious, he needed to have a talk with her. Kaede’s mind and heart begin racing a mile a minute.

“Say, Kaede…” He cast a glance down at a frayed string. “I was wondering...do you know what...sex is?”

Kaede’s face colored. “O-of course I do, Grandma told me a while ago – ”

“ _Huuuh?_ ” 

“B-besides, I already learned t-that at school too.” She stared down at her unfinished homework, eyes following the loops and curves of her own handwriting. She wondered if she had any blood left in her body since it surely had all rushed to her face.

“R-really.” She could imagine him scratching his chin, confused. She couldn’t look him in the eye since he said _the word_. “Well, do you have any questions? Are you…confused about anything?”

“No! Just…just get out!” She hurled the first stuffed animal she laid hands on towards the door and went back to her homework. After a moment, the door shut. She tried not to imagine his expression, dejected, as he shuffled back to the TV room. She tried not to feel guilty but it was his own fault, wasn’t it, for asking something so embarrassing. Entirely his own fault.

A few days later, over a large sundae, he had asked her if she had any boys she liked, flicking a bit of ice cream on the table as he gestured with his spoon. Kaede almost choked. “N-no!” she spluttered, shrugging him off as he reached a hand out to pat her on the back. “I don’t –”

“Is it Barnaby?” He leered over the table at her, grinning devilishly. “I’ll bet it’s Barnaby. I tell you, that kid is no good – ” 

“Nooo!” She accidentally cracked open the plastic table in anger.

_It was a joke, Daddy was kidding, I didn’t mean to make you mad._ He had pleaded with her from behind her bedroom door, a familiar scene. She hated when he groveled. And after a while he would give up and stalk off to another room in the house to sulk in. 

 

As the opening chords of Hero TV came on, Kaede hugged the pillow close to her chest. She tried to remember the days before she knew about him being a hero, about how she rolled her eyes at Wild Tiger. Why was someone like him partnered with Barnaby – it had surely been the greatest injustice in the world. Now it made her feel a bit ashamed, going through the old magazines, because there was more to it than the glitzy high-flying, wasn’t there? He had been trying his best, his hardest, doing something he believed in whole-heartedly. It wasn’t fair that that was it, the end of the line, not after everything he had done, everything he had worked for. But in her most private, selfish moments, she thanked God for it – he was here forever, hers forever, walking around without a shirt on and lip-synching to terrible top 40 hits with a wooden spoon, always embarrassing her. Good and bad, he was here, and that was what all that mattered.

“Hey, Dad…”

“Hmm?”

_Do you ever miss it?_ The words sat in her mouth. She sighed. “Oh…it’s nothing. Never mind. It’s just…”

“What?”

Kaede pointed to Kotetsu’s exposed stomach, shirt scrunched up. “Don’t you think you’re getting a little fat?”

“ _Huuuuuh?_ ”


End file.
